NPR & National Public Media's Year in Review: 2024

As the most trusted news brand, NPR engages with 41 million people each week across platforms. 2024 was headlined by new programming, award-winning news coverage, new research and exciting sponsorship updates. Check out a few highlights from NPR & National Public Media below.

Wild Card with Rachel Martin redefined the celebrity interview

In a brand new podcast from NPR, host Rachel Martin rips up the typical interview script and invites guests to play a game about life’s biggest questions. With the help of a custom deck of cards, Rachel takes actors, artists and thinkers on a choose-your-own-adventure conversation that lets them open up about their fears, their joys and how they’ve built meaning from experience.

Named one of The New York Times’ Best Podcasts of 2024, Wild Card has featured conversations with Seth Meyers, Kathryn Hahn, Bowen Yang and many more. Catch up on Wild Card here, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Election Day 2024 broke audience records on NPR.org

Like any election year, the headlines in 2024 revolved around the campaigns and candidates running for office. NPR’s large and loyal audience tuned into election coverage across platforms to get the latest news, and to help make sense of it. 

Election Day was NPR’s highest traffic day of 2024, bringing 14.5M views to NPR.org. Award-winning newsmagazines Morning Edition and All Things Considered also experienced positive growth trends during Election Week, along with relevant NPR news podcasts. The NPR Politics Podcast (+41%), Up First (+13%) and Consider This (+10%) all had positive user growth during Election Week 2024.

NPR Music celebrated “10” in more ways than one

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of NPR Music’s annual search for the next great undiscovered artist, the Tiny Desk Contest hit the road for a sold out ten-stop tour with 2024 winner The Philharmonik. Presenting sponsor Capital One and supporting sponsor Lagunitas Brewing Co. joined the Tiny Desk Contest: On The Road Tour on stops across the country, including Washington D.C., New Orleans, Seattle, Los Angeles, Petaluma, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Austin, Atlanta and Chicago. 

With nearly 7,000 contest entrants and 15K+ tour attendees, 2024 once again proved that the Tiny Desk Contest is only getting bigger and better with each passing year. 

The Tiny Desk Concert franchise also celebrated a huge milestone in 2024: 10M subscribers on YouTube. The ever-popular video series from NPR Music debuted notable performances from superstars like Dua Lipa and Justin Timberlake and sparked viral moments for 2024 musical newcomers like Chappell Roan and Ca7iel & Paco Amoroso, driving traffic to NPR Music’s YouTube channel and NPR.org. 

This Fall, NPM Creative, National Public Media’s creative brand studio, launched a new product offering sponsor recognition against NPR’s flagship video series, Tiny Desk Concerts. Sponsors can now become a part of the concert with a baked-in YouTube pre-roll (:10) alongside logo recognition at the start of every concert. This first-of-its-kind offering from NPR gives brands custom alignment with the ever-popular Tiny Desk franchise.

The most popular podcast episodes of 2024

While audiences tuned in to NPR for essential news coverage, they also turned to NPR for the biggest stories and features of the year. With two of the top three podcasts in the U.S., NPR News Now and Up First, NPR is a continued leader in the podcast industry. Whether it’s news, business, arts & culture, lifestyle, comedy or longform reporting, NPR invites audiences to immerse themselves in the stories that matter most today. 

The Embedded: Tested series made waves this year, as the limited documentary series focused on the history of sex testing female track and field athletes. Launching just before the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, Embedded: Tested provided historical and very relevant context as gender controversy became front and center during Olympic boxing. 

Here are a few of the other episodes listeners couldn’t stop streaming

• Planet Money: What is Temu? Inside the new shopping app
• Life Kit: 5 simple ways to minimize stress
• It’s Been A Minute: UFOs to RFKs: How conspiracy theories went mainstream
• Pop Culture Happy Hour: Wicked and What’s Making Us Happy
• Short Wave: Climate change is coming for your wine

National Public Media & Adelaide Metrics explored attention metrics on audio platforms

What makes NPR stand out from other media platforms? Its attentive, engaged, highly-discerning audience. NPR listeners lean into the stories and programming heard on NPR, and that attentiveness transfers to the brands that support NPR and their sponsorship messages. Our work with attention research firm Adelaide Metrics – whose methodology provides an apples-to-apples comparison of various media placements – found that NPR podcasts outperformed Adelaide’s podcast average by +14% and NPR display outperformed Adelaide’s display average by +43%. Learn more about attention research and download the full report here.

NPM offered brands best-in-class audio opportunities

This American Life now available through National Public Media

In August, National Public Media announced that it would become the sole sales representative for podcast sales of This American Life. As part of the partnership, NPM and This American Life also announced that the podcast will now feature one mid-roll sponsorship message per episode voiced by host Ira Glass, allowing brands to align with one of public media’s most beloved and recognizable voices. 

Arm and National Public Media announce custom podcast Tech Unheard

Arm, the company that is building the future of computing, and National Public Media announced in October their collaboration on a new custom podcast series Tech Unheard. Arm CEO Rene Haas invites fellow industry leaders and policy makers to join him in one-on-one conversations exploring a range of topics, from the future of AI to leadership insights. The first two episodes are now available for your listening, featuring NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang and Mike Gallagher, Head of Defense at Palantir Technologies. Learn more about the custom podcast here.

Bringing Organic Valley’s story to life

NPR sponsor Organic Valley worked with NPMCreative to bring an important part of their story to life with NPR listeners, building a custom audio campaign that captured the essence of Organic Valley’s small family farmers that produce their dairy products. The cross-platform campaign across NPR platforms was successful in driving significant lifts in brand awareness, perceptions and intent for both NPR podcast and NPR radio listeners overall. Learn more about why NPR and custom audio was the right fit for Organic Valley here.

Interested in what NPR sponsorship can do for your brand in 2025?

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